A Louisa County man amassed nearly $13,000 selling box turtles on Facebook Marketplace, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Stanlee Fazi, 41, pleaded guilty to trafficking turtles in a federal court in Alexandria after admitting he illegally collected the animals from the wild, bound them in socks and shipped them by FedEx to online buyers across the country on at least 27 occasions from 2017 to 2020. Ban on pet box turtles takes effect in Virginia The buyers, he said, would smuggle the turtles from the U.S. to Hong Kong and China as part of the illegal pet trade. The trafficking of the animals violated the federal Lacey Act, which prohibits the interstate transportation or sale of any wildlife captured or possessed illegally under state law and carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Virginia banned the catching of box turtles, as well as other common reptiles and amphibians, from the wild in 2021 because of declining populations and mistreatment by pet owners. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offices in Baltimore and Vero Beach, Florida, conducted the investigation as part of “Operation Middleman,” which focused on the trafficking of reptiles from the U.S.
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Louisa County man trafficked $13000 worth of turtles on Facebook Marketplace
